Rivulet (27 page)

“And what do they have to do with them? Why did you put fire wings on them? Did you just change them—without asking?”

“They’ve always been there,” Skylynn said with a sense of remorse. “They were intended to be your guardians, to shield you from unworthy souls that asked for your redemption.”

“Past tense,” Gavin said under his breath.

“Very much so,” Skylynn said, letting her eyes rise to meet his. “You would have to be alive to fulfill that fate.”

“But, but we are working on that, right?” I said with a tremble as I tried to understand why she seemed so upset.

“I don’t know anymore,” she said with a hopeless sigh. “I always knew you were one of the seven, that you had a remarkable power to stand within the bitter cold of the evil, but I didn’t realize that though you were born to rule the veil, your power came with life. That once life was taken, your rule was taken.” She looked down. “The veil grieves tonight.”

“I’m—we’re not going anywhere until vengeance is ours,” I swore as I struggled to grasp what she thought I was, what I was supposed to be.

“That is a very fine line you are walking there, Indie. I will find your vengeance, along with so many more at my side. Rasure had to have known that she would answer for your demise, and yet she committed this ungodly act without hesitation. She sacrificed herself for your death. Know that.”

“Well, call me crazy, but I don’t give a damn why she did it. I’m going to find some freaking clocks, set my family free, and become more of a vengeance than that red-headed demon has ever dared to fear.”

“Not tonight,” Skylynn said in a whisper. “I’ll find your clocks…” She glanced over her shoulder. “You need to say your goodbyes.”

As soon as she said the word ‘goodbye,’ I felt everything in my soul break apart. My will to breathe, to live, to fight—vanished. I sucked in a deep breath and scolded myself for acting like a fool. What was one goodbye? I’d lost him before. I’ll find him again.

What I could not figure out was why Skylynn had changed her play, why she was no longer willing to cross him—to have someone else turn us all so we could live our lives and move this world. I couldn’t figure out why she was giving up on me.

“Come on, boys.” Skylynn said. After a whisk of wind, the three of them vanished, leaving me to gape at an open doorway that led to Phoenix.

I stared at that threshold for countless moments, trying to find the courage to move forward, to understand what I could have done to lose the defense of Skylynn. I kept telling myself that it could not have been something as foolish as trusting my sister. It had to have been him. Phoenix must have convinced her that the war they are fighting was too dangerous, that I was too weak to stand at their side.

I’d never been a quitter. The two of them would have to force me to let go, and I doubted either of them knew how difficult a task that would be.

I walked forward boldly, prepared to argue this out, prepared to tell him that I didn’t care that he was leaving me again, that the universe itself had divided us for its own selfish reasons. I wasn’t giving in.

He was leaning against the pool of fire in the center of the room. His strong arms and long legs were crossed, and every muscle in his body was flexed in what could only be anger.

Around this oval room, there were stained glass windows that reflected angels at play. The ceiling was glass and amplified the stars above.

I walked over to the ledge next to the stained glass window that imitated the sun and the moon and pulled myself up, slid back, and stared at him. He held my stare for what seemed like forever.

“Well played,” I finally said.

He tilted his head, as if to question me.

“You have managed to make the cold ice I live within as warm as fire…you have managed to make me feel the agony of rejection once again. I don’t know what you said to her, how you convinced her that I should move on, but I’m not listening. I’m on the verge of uncovering something that never should have been hidden.” I looked down. “So if the lingering question in your eyes is if I will now finally let go, the answer is no. Not now. Not ever.
I have seen…and felt too much to say any goodbyes.”

Like a predator, he slowly moved forward. When he was inches from me, he leisurely leaned toward me, causing me to fall against the window. He reached his fingertips for my brow, and when his skin touched mine I could swear that I felt fire course through my soul. Slowly, as if he knew how agonizingly blissful his touch was, he let his fingertips trace down my cheek, neck, shoulder, chest, waist, all the way down to my thighs just before he whispered, “The question is…if eternity with me is what you really want.” He squeezed my thigh as his smoldering eyes invaded my very being. “Or is this our next goodbye.”

He leaned into my ear, letting his warm breath slide down my neck. “I already know the answer.”

It took every ounce of willpower that has ever existed in the universe, but I pushed him back and stepped down from the marble wall. My first instinct was to run, and I made it a few steps before rapid-fire memories started to flood my mind. Some were of my childhood, words my mother used to say to comfort me when my curse was too much to bear. Others, most of them, were of him, in another life, in another time. The wounds were fresh again. The emotions were raw, and the one emotion I refused to let myself feel immersed me.

“You’re playing the devil’s advocate,” I said before turning to glare at him. “You—you know I am the one person on this planet that cannot stand commitment. You know it took the better part of a year for me to even let you speak to me, that the more you promised me, the more I refused you. It was only when you let me be, when you made it seem like it was my idea that I ran into your arms and confessed that I loved you from my first breath, that when I laid eyes on you for the first time I found purpose, life.”

He was speechless, which gave me confidence that what I was saying was not only true, but also to him—as well as me—it felt like that
happened just yesterday.

I went on. “Half of you wants to believe I’m real.” His eyes grew wide with surprise. “Don’t look at me like that. I know. I know you think I’m some kind of echo of the girl that you once knew, that this is my image, my words, but that my soul, the one that has belonged to you since the beginning of time, has moved on.” I swallowed nervously. “And by the way, the next time you decide to throw me on the floor and have your way with me, you better be
damn
sure that this is all me. I have never—and I mean
never
—given that much of myself to anyone. Ever. To think that you were not all there, that you were holding back because you thought I was not the real thing, is by far the coldest thing you have ever done.”

That hurt him. I could see the agony all over his flawless image.

“But I forgive you for that…” My eyes absorbed every inch of him. “I forgive you because I would have done the same thing because in this short, pointless life I’ve lived, that is what I did every second of every day. I held back.”

I balled my fist in front of my stomach. “There is a rock right here, covered in layers and layers of ice. I pushed everything deep down inside of me. Too scared to feel. To love. To be held. Because everything I touched, I destroyed. I refused to live because I feared who I was. What I was. I found people. Good people, who were not afraid to live life, to take a passion and make something beautiful out of it…and wanting to be closer to that, to feel it firsthand, I began relationships that were doomed from day one. I would reach the edge of the cliff and refuse to jump. I refused because it was the wrong cliff. The bold, fearless girl they thought they knew didn’t exist. I refused because it wasn’t worth the dare.”

“Dare?” he questioned with a crack in his voice.

“When I would cry, break apart because of this curse, tell my mother that I could never have a real life…she would tell me that all of life is a dare, that every second of every day, life dares us to live, to make a difference, to become who we were designed to be: a perfectly flawed soul who has the choice to be as miserable or happy as we want to be.” My voice trembled. “She told me, she promised me that one day there would be a dare, a person that made me realize that who I was, curse and all, was beautiful, powerful. They would be worth every dare, every ounce of pain and I would not think twice before I let my guard down and bared my soul to them.”

I stepped forward. “I didn’t let my guard down, let you in hours after I knew you because of some fog of death. I let you in because the second I laid eyes on you, my heart gave me two beats. The second you touched my hand, I understood that I wasn’t some cursed, abandoned girl set on revenge. I was someone who once had warmth, who once felt complete, whole.” I couldn’t hold his stare any longer, so I glanced to the floor. “You can play whatever mind games you want with me, tell me I really don’t want you to save me, that I have feelings for others, that the fog of death has shadowed my true intentions. You can even tell me to let go…but I won’t. I won’t because the few moments I have spent with you have set my soul on fire, enough fire to keep the vengeful side of me at bay for an eternity.”

Within a beat, he was at my side, gently pulling my chin up so I would be forced to look him in the eye. “I didn’t hold back,” he whispered, and the pain in his eyes told me that that was nothing less than the truth. “Every second of every day, I have thought of you, searched for you, fought and bargained my way to finding you. And when I did…when I figured out I was too late again…it tore me in two.” He pulled me closer. “You looked so scared, so confused. I could see the pain in your eyes. I wanted to rip whoever had hurt you into a million pieces, scatter their remains across the universe—give them no hope of ever returning to life. I didn’t want you to feel that rage. I didn’t want you to know everything. I wanted you to think that Rasure was the darkest thing in this world and that I would end it for you, so that you could rest in peace.” His strong hands squeezed my waist. “I knew if you let me do that, that you were gone, that this life had suffocated the woman I’ve loved across time…and when you refused you gave me hope, but that is a selfish hope that I am ashamed to feel.”

“I know the world is cruel. I don’t need to be protected from reality,” I said quietly as I tried to understand why he would be ashamed to be with me…love me.

“So says the girl whose soul is guarded by the sons of the east and the west.”

I stepped back from him. “Jealousy. That was a beautiful speech you just spoke…but you could have summed it up. You could have said that it’s not the danger of the war you are fighting or the awareness of the darkness I will see that is stopping you from saving me; it’s jealousy, plain and simple. You are condemning me for relationships that existed in your absence.”

“I wish that were true,” he said with an ache in his silky voice as his gray eyes took in every part of me.

“If that is not true, then you are going to have to come up with another speech, one that I can believe. Understand.”

“To redeem your soul, you must pass through the line of the moons—the flaming sons of the east and the west—to reach the seventh sister, whose touch will destroy the flames of evil that bind you’…I am in love with a goddess.”

“I am
not
a goddess.”

“To the dead you are. To the supernatural death you are. Those boys are not almost lovers, they are your guards. They shield you from all that are unworthy. They never hide anything from you. They feel your soul, and when they know that you trust someone, adore them, they will let them close, even if they know they are dangerous, not because they are weak, but because they know that soon, very soon, the truth will be revealed and that they will shield and avenge you before any of your power is seized.”

“I am the last person to say something cruel about those boys, but you need a reality check. They didn’t shield me from death. Life is power.”

“I cannot tell you how or why that happened. It could have simply been because you were unaware of your power, giving them no reason to protect it. Nevertheless, you did fall, and…if you do not let go,” his jaw tightened just before he said, “…so many more will, too.”

There was nothing less than grief in his voice. He believed every word he was saying.

“I don’t understand, Sebastian,” I said in a whisper.

Saying his real name, the name I’d known him to have before, did nothing but bring more anguish to his deep gray eyes, which were laced with fire.

He was against me within the next beat of my heart, leaning his forehead to mine as his hands clenched my waist. “It means that if you choose this vengeful path that every soul who fights in the war I’m in, everyone that falls, will have no way out. Over time, enough of us will fall, and when we do, when we can no longer set ourselves free, darkness will overcome, bringing self-destruction to our universe.” He reached his hands for my face and stole one gentle kiss before he said, “I’m selfish enough to never let you go, to burn you to ashes and let you rise with me, but you’re not. You will not let innocents suffer only for the sake of loving me. You will not let this war end without balance.”

I moved my head from side to side in disbelief as I stepped back. “You can’t just show up here and tell me that not only am I a freak of nature, I am supposed to set some souls free. You have the wrong girl. I would have remembered that by now in my life. What kind of goddess of whatever can even die?”